Don’t include vaping in bans on flavored-tobacco sales

San Francisco Bay Area residents often are proud of the region’s progressive approach to social issues to a degree that approaches smugness. Unlike those rubes in the nation’s backwaters, this region’s residents know that trying to, say, combat sexually transmitted diseases with abstinence is endangering people’s health.

I certainly embrace San Francisco values on the above-mentioned issue. It’s not the government’s role to moralize about sexual behavior, but it can help reduce harm by promoting various safe-sex practices and public-health strategies. Yet when it comes to the issue of tobacco-related products, Bay Area politicians are remarkably regressive, as they embrace a policy that is as Prohibition-oriented as something that might come out of the Deep South.

Instead of helping people reduce the harm of tobacco use, politicians in San Francisco and Oakland (and some suburban locales, too) are proposing citywide bans on flavored-tobacco products that include bans on flavored liquids used in e-cigarettes, even though vaping is a far safer alternative than cigarette smoking.

State law gives cities and counties wide latitude to regulate tobacco sales, so several localities are in the process of expanding their tobacco ordinances. San Francisco is considering a measure at the June 14 supervisors’ meeting, while these flavor bans are working their way through the process in Oakland, Contra Costa County and San Leandro.

The reason for supporters’ religious-like zeal: Tobacco is bad for people.

Yes, tobacco products — especially of the combustible variety — are dangerous. If you want to shave 10 years off of your life, by all means start smoking cigarettes. No one has to love tobacco companies. Their past marketing practice was a key point made at an Oakland City Council meeting, where menthol flavoring is in the crosshairs, given its popularity in minority communities.

Big Tobacco is, well, Big Tobacco. It sells a dangerous, albeit legal, product. It’s not the only dangerous product people use. The question is how to help people stop using it. In many places, ranting about the drug cartels is popular among politicians, who then embrace policies (e.g., a federal drug war) that actually keep those cartels in business. In other words, emotional arguments often lead to counterproductive policies.

One needn’t be a fan of the Medellín cartel to understand that decriminalization undermines the black marketplace that keeps the pusher men employed. And one needn’t be a tool of Big Tobacco to realize that these bans will make it harder for people to access safer products.

The flavored tobacco bans are dangerously counterproductive. Large percentages of smokers are giving up their deadly cigarette habit by embracing that far-less-dangerous one — the use of e-cigarettes. In Britain, which has long taken a more progressive approach to drug addiction than the United States, health officials call for policymakers to actually promote vaping, which they find 95 percent safer than traditional cigarette smoking.

Vaping is not totally safe, which is the point San Francisco and Oakland health officials make as they include vaping liquids (almost all of which are flavored) in the definition of tobacco (they aren’t tobacco but they mostly have nicotine). Almost all vaping liquids are flavored, so that definition bans their sale. Because vaping isn’t 100 percent safe, they want to make it off limits to consenting adults. And by essentially banning sales (there are some limited exemptions included in the proposed ordinances), officials in the Bay Area are making it more likely that smokers just grab a pack of more readily available cigarettes.

In their view, smokers should abstain, or embrace those medically approved cessation devices (gum, patches and prescription drugs) that appeal to only a small number of smokers. The whole approach reminds one of journalist H.L. Mencken’s definition of Puritanism: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Former smokers take pleasure in vaping, as they break the habit. It’s far more enjoyable to sit on the patio and puff an e-cigarette than wear a nicotine patch. That no doubt infuriates the anti-tobacco zealots.

I admit that I don’t like the flavored bans for a variety of reasons, centered on this libertarian’s belief that adults should be free to make their own decisions, even bone-headedly stupid ones (such as smoking cigarettes). But San Francisco and other cities should be smart and remove vaping from the proposed bans. It would be a shame to sacrifice public health in service to moral absolutism.